In this work, Sharon Cadman Seelig tests traditional notions of genre by analyzing parallels between works that confound existing categories. Seelig pairs three 17th-century prose works with three other works, each of a later century: Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy with Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Browne's Religio Medici with Thoreau's Walden, and Donne's Devotions upon Emergent Occasions with Eliot's Four Quartets. Proceeding from her authors' similarities in method and common sets of assumptions, (such as concern with process and discovery, time and eternity, or the nature of the self), she uncovers parallels showing that genre is not simply a set of formal features but rather a particular way of seeing the world that grows out of authorial attitude, impulse and occasion.